Simple Strawberry Pie

It's a really easy pie to make, and one of my favorites.  Recipe to come when I find a moment.  Sophy's choice, once again.

For this pie, I borrowed a recipe from Paulette Condrasky, my Italian mother in law.  She's the best cook I know, and I rarely see her use a recipe, or measure anything, or pay any attention at all to what she's doing when she cooks.  And she drinks vodka tonics, the whole time she's cooking.  But what she puts on the table is awesome.

This is a very simple strawberry pie.  Why get complicated, when the basics taste so good?

Ingredients
Extra Flaky Crust (credit to Ken Haedrich from his book (Pie)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cake flour
1 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter
5 tbs cold Crisco
1/4 cup cold water


Filling
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
3 tbs cornstarch
dash of salt
sliver of butter
2 tbs dry Strawberry Jello
1 qt of strawberries

Method
To make and prebake crust
Combine flours, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Add butter and toss with flour.  With mixer on low, blend the butter into the flour until you have coarse, damp meal with large and small clumps.  Add Crisco and repeat.  Pulse the mixer, add half of the water and pulse again.  Do not over mix.

Using your hands, pack the dough into a ball.  Knead two or three times.  Put in the center of a piece of plastic wrap and flatten into a disk about 3/4 inch thick.  Wrap in the plastic and refrigeragte until firm enough to roll, at least an hour.

Fully prebaking the shell: 
You'll need pie weights (I use dried beans) and silver foil. 
Grease and flour 9" pie dish.
Roll your dough on floured wax paper.  Place dough in pan.  Refrigerate for fifteen minutes to firm up the fat, which will increase the flakiness as it bakes.  Once out of the refrigerator, mold gently to pan, shape edge as desired, and trim edges. 
Completely cover the dough with silver foil, and cover foil with pie weights (or beans).  With oven preheated to 400 degrees, bake on center rack for 15 minutes.  Remove foil and pie weights and prick the bottom and sides with a fork so that it won't puff up.  Rotate pie 180 degrees and return to oven.  Lower temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 15 minutes.

To make filling:
Combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, 3 tbs cornstarch, dash of salt in saucepan.  Place on medium heat and stir occasionally until boiling.  Once it boils, stir continuously for two minutes and remove from heat.  Add a sliver of butter and 2 tbs of dry strawberry jello.  Let cool.  Clean and slice berries and place in large bowl.  Fold enough of the cooled jello mixture into the berries to bind them - use 1/2 to 3/4 of jello mixture.  Place in baked crust, cool, and serve.